The present invention relates to the general field of multimedia applications.
More particularly it relates to using a touch interface to control the display of elements of a list by means of a display device. The elements of the list may in particular be multimedia contents such as video streams, images, applications, data files, etc., and the display device may be a screen, e.g. a computer screen or a TV screen.
The invention thus applies in preferred, but non-limiting manner, to displaying audiovisual content on a screen, e.g. in order to provide a channel-switching service amongst a plurality of channels broadcast by a digital TV operator, or to offer a service of navigating a video catalog.
Over the last few years, there has been considerable development in multimedia equipment fitted with touch interfaces, such as a touch screen or a touchpad.
A touchpad is conventionally used as means for replacing a mouse, in particular on laptop computers. It constitutes a high performance pointer device that enables a cursor to be moved easily on the screen of a computer.
Nevertheless, use thereof becomes more difficult when it is necessary to act on elements displayed on the computer screen.
To mitigate that problem, a touchpad is often associated with one or more buttons located above or below the touchpad and acting as selector buttons in the same manner as the buttons on a mouse, thus limiting the actions that can be performed using the touchpad on its own. Those buttons associated with the touchpad serve in particular to control the display of elements on the screen, where such control is not presently possible in easy and reliable manner using a touchpad.
There thus exists a need to have a method of controlling the display of elements on a display device by means of a touch interface that does not require recourse to additional peripheral equipment such as buttons, and that is equally applicable to utilization of a touch interface in the form of a touchpad or in the form of a touch screen.
Document EP 2 116 927 describes a mobile telephone with a touch screen suitable for displaying a list of messages. Using the touch screen, the user can cause the messages to scroll along a first axis. Furthermore, a movement along a second axis makes it possible, at the location of a selected message, to display some other message associated with the selected message. Nevertheless, it is not possible to increase the quantity of information displayed for a selected message.